Ellen
Swicord

Ellen Swicord is a Harold W. Rosenthal Fellow in International Relations working with the Global Nuclear Policy Program. In this role, she supports the work of senior GNPP staff members by conducting research, drafting memos, and carrying out additional project-related tasks as needed.

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Swicord comes to the Nuclear Threat Initiative from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), where she studies international relations and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public and International Affairs. Before attending SPIA, she worked in Washington D.C. as Research Associate for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Swicord first became interested in the Korean Peninsula in 2009, when she traveled to South Korea to participate in the inaugural Camp Fulbright Junior Internship Program. She lived in South Korea for two years, studying Korean intensively as a recipient of the Boren Scholarship and participant in the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program. Swicord has served as an intern at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Korean Affairs and as a Young Fellow at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Education and Research Center. She received a BA in Political Science and East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2018. After graduating from Princeton, Swicord hopes to work on issues of U.S.-South Korea alliance management and North Korean nuclear nonproliferation. In her free time, she enjoys science fiction, coffee, and travel.